Inertial Spinner Swarm Experiments: Spin Pumping, Entropy Oscillations and Spin Frustration

TL;DR

This study explores the behavior of inertial active spinning swarms, revealing phenomena like spin pumping, entropy oscillations, and spin frustration, influenced by spinner interactions, density, and geometric confinement.

Contribution

It introduces experimental insights into inertial spinner swarms, demonstrating spin energy focusing, entropy oscillations, and frustrated states based on spin interactions and confinement.

Findings

Minority spinners achieve high spin angular momentum.

Entropy oscillations occur with net spin imbalance at high densities.

Geometric confinement leads to frustrated spin states.

Abstract

We present here an inertial active spinning swarm consisting of mixtures of opposite handedness torque driven spinners floating on an air bed with low damping. Depending on the relative spin sign, spinners can act as their own anti-particles and annihilate their spins. Rotational energy can become highly focused, with minority fraction spinners pumped to very high levels of spin angular momentum. Spinner handedness also matters at high spinner densities but not low densities: oscillations in the mixing spatial entropy of spinners over time emerge if there is a net spin imbalance from collective rotations. Geometrically confined spinners can lock themselves into frustrated spin states.